Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. – Henry David Thoreau
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles. – Henry David Thoreau
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. – Henry David Thoreau
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. – Henry David Thoreau
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them. – Henry David Thoreau
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? – Henry David Thoreau
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. – Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself. – Henry David Thoreau
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society. – Henry David Thoreau
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise. – Henry David Thoreau
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe. – Henry David Thoreau
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. – Henry David Thoreau
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. – Henry David Thoreau
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. – Henry David Thoreau
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. – Henry David Thoreau
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free. – Henry David Thoreau